Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:01:49.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AL-FĀRĀBĪ ON INDEFINITE AND PRIVATIVE NAMES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

PAUL THOM
PAUL THOM
Affiliation:
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, The University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his Short Treatise and his Commentary on the Peri hermeneias, al-Fārābī offers two different but related accounts of indefinite terms and the propositions that contain them. In both works he presents a series of different senses that an indefinite term may have, commencing with a sense in which such a term would be equivalent to a privative term, and concluding with a sense in which it would determine the logical complement of the corresponding definite term. I offer an interpretation of this series according to which they reveal the workings of a fine analytical mind and a subtle teacher.

Type
Research Article
Information
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , September 2008 , pp. 193 - 209
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)